Field of the Invention:
The invention relates to an electronic component with semiconductor chips that are stacked one on the other and a method for fabricating the component.
Electronic components are stacked to form larger hybrid units after the completion of each individual device with a semiconductor chip and a lead frame. Via the different lead frames the finished devices that are stacked one above the other are connected to form an electronic component with semiconductor chips stacked one on the other, wherein the outer flat conductors of the lead frames are connected to one another via corresponding external contact pins. Electronic components comprising stacked individual devices which are formed in this way have the disadvantage that they cannot be produced in a compact design, especially as each lead frame between the devices has a large space requirement.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide an electronic component and a method for fabricating the component, which overcome the above-mentioned disadvantages of the heretofore-known devices and methods of this general type and wherein the advantages of planar technology can be used and wherein it is possible to obtain significantly more compact structures for electronic components comprising stacked individual parts.
With the foregoing and other objects in view there is provided, in accordance with the invention, an electronic component, comprising:
a stack of a plurality of semiconductor chips each having an active top side and a sawn edge;
contact areas and interconnects formed on the active top side for rewiring to contact areas of respectively adjacent (overlying and/or underlying) semiconductor chips; and
the interconnects connecting to the contact areas on the active top side, extending toward the sawn edge of the semiconductor chip, and connecting to the respectively adjacent semiconductor chips via through-contacts formed at the sawn edge of the semiconductor chip.
In other words, the electronic component comprises semiconductor chips which are stacked one on the other and have, on their active top side, contact areas and interconnects for rewiring to contact areas of overlying or underlying semiconductor chips. To that end, the interconnects for rewiring are arranged on the top side of the semiconductor chip and connected to the contact areas. The interconnects for rewiring extend from the contact areas on the active top side of the semiconductor chips to the edges of the semiconductor chip and are connected to overlying and underlying semiconductor chips via through contacts, which are arranged on sawn edges of the semiconductor chip.
Such an electronic component has the advantage that a plurality of semiconductor chips which are stacked one on the other can be arranged without having to arrange complicated lead frames in between. Rather, the connections between semiconductor chips that are stacked one above the other are realized by the through contacts arranged on sawn edges of the semiconductor chip. This technology makes full use of the advantage of planar technology in that, before a wafer is actually divided, it is possible to complete all the through contacts in the region of the sawing tracks and through contacts are produced only when the wafer is divided into individual semiconductor chips, said through contacts being configured in circle segment form in cross section. The sawing ensures that the through contacts are arranged at the edge of each chip and are thus easily accessible for connection to the underlying interconnects for rewiring.
In one embodiment of the invention, the bottommost semiconductor chip has solder deposits instead of through contacts. In a further preferred embodiment of the invention, said deposits may be screen printing solder deposits. These solder deposits may have the effect that upon the emplacement of the next semiconductor chip and heating to soldering temperature the solder melt rises on account of capillary action in the through contact holes arranged at the edge of overlying semiconductor chips. To that end, the through contact holes have, on the one hand, an adhesion promoter layer and, on the other hand, a solderable coating, preferably made of copper, silver, gold or alloys thereof. These metals are distinguished by the fact that they are readily wettable and consequently exhibit a great capillary action for the through contacts.
In a further embodiment of the invention, a rewiring plane is in each case arranged between the stacked semiconductor chips. These rewiring planes in no way correspond to a lead frame of an electronic component with semiconductor chips. The rewiring plane is merely formed from the interconnects for rewiring, which, in a further embodiment of the invention, are arranged on an insulating layer on the active semiconductor top side. This insulating layer is patterned in such a way that the contact areas remain uncovered for access to the electronic circuits of the semiconductor chip and the interconnects can be applied unimpeded with relatively inexpensive means for rewiring. That also includes the screen printing of such interconnects on the insulating layer.
In a further embodiment of the invention, the through contacts themselves have an adhesion promoter layer on their inner wall, which layer may preferably be composed of titanium and/or a titanium alloy. Said adhesion promoter layer is intended to facilitate the transition from the semiconductor material to the soldering material and at the same time ensure that a solderable surface coating becomes possible on the inner wall of the through hole. As mentioned above, such an inner coating may again be formed from copper, silver or gold in order to improve the wetting with a solder material.
The insulating layer provided between the semiconductor chip surface and the interconnects for rewiring is preferably a polymer, in particular a polyimide layer.
Since the through contacts, the coating of the inner wall of the through contacts and the provision of the interconnects for rewiring can be carried out at a wafer level, i.e. simultaneously for many semiconductor chips, this electronic component has the advantage that it can predominantly be fabricated with the aid of planar technology. Through contacts on the sawn edges of the semiconductor chip are produced if care is taken to ensure that the through contacts are already present in the sawing tracks of the wafer before a saw blade whose thickness is less than the diameter of the through contacts separates the chips at their edges. Through contacts having circle segments in cross section are produced from the cylindrical through contacts during the separation process. If rectangular or triangular through contacts are incorporated into the semiconductor wafer, then after sawing pillar-type structures are produced which in each case have only part of the cross section of the originally introduced quadrangular and triangular pillars, since the central region of each pillar has been sawn out by the dividing operation.
In a further embodiment of the invention, the semiconductor chips comprise memory chips. In memory chips, in particular, there is a need to realize as far as possible a high volume density of memory locations, which is now possible by virtue of the apparatus according to the invention since all lead frames are obviated and no housing structures whatsoever enlarge the volume of the electronic component with stacked semiconductor chips.
Accordingly, the apparatus according to the invention makes it possible to realize extremely compact electronic components, and a further compacting effect can be achieved by thinning the semiconductor chips by grinding. To that end, thinning-by-grinding techniques are employed which reduce the initial thickness of a semiconductor wafer of approximately 500 to 800 xcexcm by at least one order of magnitude to 50 to 80 xcexcm, so that a semiconductor wafer having a thickness of hundreds of xcexcm becomes a semiconductor chip of tens of xcexcm. If semiconductor chips comprising such wafers that have been thinned by grinding are used for the electronic component according to the invention, then the bulk density of the memory function is increased by at least one order of magnitude.
With the above and other objects in view there is also provided, in accordance with the invention, a method of fabricating an electronic component having semiconductor chips stacked on one another and connected via rewiring planes and through contacts formed at sawn edges of the semiconductor chip. The novel method comprises the following steps:
providing a semiconductor wafer with semiconductor chips arranged in rows and columns and sawing track regions therebetween;
applying an insulating layer for protection and for insulation of an active top side of the semiconductor chips;
forming through contact holes in the sawing track regions, the contact holes having a diameter greater than a width of a saw blade for dicing the semiconductor wafer;
coating an inner wall of the through contact holes with at least one of an adhesion promoter and a solderable surface coating;
filling the through contact holes with solder material to form through contacts;
patterning the insulating layer by uncovering contact areas on the active top side of the semiconductor chip and applying interconnects for rewiring on the insulating layer, the interconnects for rewiring connecting individual contact areas to the through contacts;
dicing the semiconductor wafer to form semiconductor chips; and
stacking a plurality of semiconductor chips to form an electronic component.
In other words, the method for fabricating an electronic component having semiconductor chips which are stacked one on the other and are connected via rewiring planes and through contacts, which are arranged on sawn edges of the semiconductor chip, has the following method steps:
provision of a semiconductor wafer with semiconductor chips arranged in rows and columns and sawing track regions provided in between,
application of an insulating layer for protection and for insulation of the active top side of the semiconductor chip,
introduction of through contact holes in the sawing track regions, whose diameter is greater than the thickness of the saw blade when the semiconductor wafer is divided and separated,
coating of the inner wall of the through contact holes with an adhesion promoter and/or a solderable surface coating,
filling of the through contact holes with solder material to form through contacts,
patterning of the insulating layer with uncovering of contact areas on the active top side of the semiconductor chip and application of interconnects for rewiring on the insulating layer, the interconnects for rewiring connecting individual contact pads to the through contacts,
separation of the semiconductor wafer to form semiconductor chips,
stacking of a plurality of semiconductor chips to form an electronic component.
This method has the advantage that the majority of the method steps are carried out on the semiconductor wafer itself and, consequently, the method steps are realized simultaneously for many semiconductor chips. What is thus achieved, in principle, is that each semiconductor chip is provided with corresponding through contacts at its sawn edge and has, on its active top side, a rewiring plane with rewiring lines from the contact areas to the through contacts.
After dicing, i.e., division and separation into individual semiconductor chips, with such edge structures and surface structures, the individual semiconductor chips can be stacked one on the other and be connected to one another in the stacked state in a simple heat treatment process wherein the soldering temperature is reached.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the interconnects for rewiring are applied to the patterned insulating layer by means of screen printing. Since the interconnects for the rewiring no longer have to be made microscopically small, like the connecting interconnects within the integrated circuit structures, a screen printing method is possible for inexpensive mass production. This screen printing method can be employed on the entire wafer surface, i.e. as a further planar technology step and not for each separated semiconductor chip. Furthermore, for the bottommost semiconductor chips of a stack, it is possible to prepare a wafer which does not have any through contacts but rather provides soldering deposits at the corresponding locations. These soldering deposits then have the task of rising, when the stack is heated to a soldering temperature, in the through contact openings by means of capillary forces as far as the topmost semiconductor chip, if the through contacts are provided continuously as far as the topmost semiconductor chip. For connections which are not intended to reach right down to the base chip, the through contact opening is already filled with soldering material at the wafer level. However, this filling process can also be effected by screen printing.
A further implementation of the method provides for the soldering material to be applied by electrodeposition.
In order to ensure that the through contact openings are wetted with soldering material, in a further exemplary implementation of the method, firstly an adhesion promoter preferably made of titanium or a titanium alloy is applied to the inner wall of the through contacts and then surface layers made of copper, silver or gold or alloys thereof are applied.
This application can be effected with the aid of sputtering technology or CVD deposition (vapor phase deposition).
Through contact holes are introduced into the wafer in the region of the sawing tracks by means of reactive ion etching, laser vaporization and/or by means of electrolytic etching with the aid of cannulae or tubes. The smallest through contact holes can be achieved by means of reactive ion etching, wherein ions are accelerated rectilinearly and impinge on the semiconductor surface in an orthogonal direction, so that virtually perpendicular uniform through holes can be fabricated. Laser vaporization is suitable for larger diameters, wherein process a focused laser beam vaporizes the semiconductor material and can thereby produce a through hole. Larger diameters are achieved by electrolytic etching with the assistance of a cannula, wherein a metal wire which has a diameter of a few micrometers and is at anode potential is arranged within the cannula and a continuous electrolyte current erodes the wafer material at cathode potential.
The orders of magnitude of these through holes are between 10 and 50 xcexcm in the case of reactive ion etching, between 100 and 250 xcexcm in the case of laser etching and between 150 and 250 xcexcm in the case of electrolytic etching. The patterning of the insulating layer with the uncovering of contact areas on the active top side of the semiconductor chip can be achieved by means of a photolithography method or by means of laser sputtering or laser vaporization of the insulating layer in order to uncover the contact areas on the active top side of the semiconductor chip.
In a further exemplary implementation of the method, the interconnect can be applied to the patterned insulating layer by means of screen printing. Since both the contact areas and the interconnects for rewiring can be made relatively wide and are no longer microscopically small, such that they can only be measured using an optical microscope, the interconnects for rewiring can be realized by means of an inexpensive screen printing method directly on the wafer.
In a particular exemplary implementation of the method, before the actual separation, a plurality of semiconductor wafers are stacked one on the other and the through contacts are connected to the interconnects of the rewiring of overlying or underlying semiconductor wafers by means of a thermal treatment. Consequently, only after the semiconductor wafers have been brought together densely packed one on the other are they then separated into stacked semiconductor chips. With this method, practically the planar technology is still used for the stacking of the semiconductor chips. Only after stacked semiconductor wafers are present is the sawing step carried out and automatically produces stacked, interconnected semiconductor chips with a high volume and switching function density.
The connection of the through contacts to the interconnects of overlying or underlying semiconductor wafers of the semiconductor wafers which are stacked one on the other can be achieved by heating the stack of semiconductor wafers to soldering temperature.
In an alternative method, semiconductor wafers are etched from the rear side directly below the contact areas and these etching structures are subsequently metallized. However, such a method cannot be used to obtain narrow step sizes between the through contact holes, since, on account of the crystal direction of the semiconductor, in particular of the silicon, pyramid forms with a sidewall angle of approximately 54xc2x0 are always formed during etching, as a result of which the opening is significantly larger on the rear side of the wafer than on the front side. This is a considerable problem particularly in the case of unthinned wafers with a thickness of approximately 500 to 800 xcexcm, since the etching openings can reach 500 xcexcm or more on the rear side and, consequently, the step size of the contact pads on the front side, which is normally approximately 200 xcexcm, is completely exceeded. Moreover, such etchings limit the active region of the top side of the semiconductor chip enormously, so that the utilizable area on the active top side is greatly limited.
The computer and software industry demands memory and memory modules with an ever greater storage capacity. Since the available area is also normally limited, the present invention proposes stacking a plurality of wafers one on the other. Stacked semiconductor wafers offer a maximum of storage capacity in conjunction with a comparatively small space requirement.
In one embodiment of the invention, the semiconductor wafer stack comprises a base wafer without through contact holes but with corresponding solder deposits and a number n of additional wafers which, as stack wafers, have been provided with contact holes.
Since the sawing track region between individual semiconductor chips on a semiconductor wafer has a width of between 70 and 120 xcexcm, such a sawing track is advantageously used for functional tests during chip fabrication. However, hitherto the sawing track has not been supplied for any further use after the completion of the chips. Therefore, the present invention provides for through contact holes to be introduced in the region of the sawing track of the stack wafers, via which holes a vertical contact can then be effected. Consequently, an electronic component comprising stacked semiconductor chips can be fabricated by four work steps:
Step 1. Production of the contact holes in the sawing track region of the stack wafers. In this case, the through contact holes can be dry-etched, for example from the front to the rear side, or be produced by laser boring or by an electrolytic method. The diameter of the holes may reach the width of the storing track regions, i.e. range between 40 and 120 xcexcm. After the production of the through contact holes, the holes have to be metallized in an electrically conductive manner. This metallization may comprise a plurality of layers, but essentially an adhesion layer and a conductive layer. The conductive layer must be readily wettable by a soft solder. The layer system can be effected either by vapor deposition or by chemical vapor deposition or by physical vapor deposition or else by electrodeposition.
Step 2. The wafers are then provided with a rewiring. In other words, the electrical contacts are covered from the center (or, in the case of contact pads, at the external contacts thereof, but at any rate from the contact areas to the through contact areas). In addition, the base wafer receives, for the rewiring, solder deposits at the locations which later correspond to the contact pads of the overlying wafer.
Step 3. The wafers can then be provided with a double-sided adhesive film which either likewise has metallized contact holes, or the wafers can be bonded onto one another using an adhesive, wherein case care should be taken to ensure that the contact holes are not closed off. It may be necessary, in an additional step, for the through contact hole to be opened again and remetallized. The semiconductor wafers are thus bonded together. For this purpose, the adhesive must be sufficiently thermostable to withstand the subsequent soldering temperatures. The adhesive used may be a polyimide-based adhesive. Further possibilities for connecting the wafers to one another consist in eutectic bonding or else in alloy bonding. To that end, corresponding metal areas are provided on the wafers, which have material components which together form eutectic alloys having a low melting point.
Step 4. The wafers are subsequently heated in a furnace until the solder rises upward through the through contact holes by means of capillary action and thus connects the through contacts to one another.
The following advantages are attained with a method of this type:
a. An extremely high storage density is achieved.
b. It is not necessary to keep free any chip area for additional through contacts.
c. It is possible to use comparatively inexact methods, e.g. electrodeposition, solder paste printing, and hence cost-effective methods.
d. The wafers can, but need not, be thinned by grinding, so that it is possible to obviate handling and process steps.
e. Standard wafers, i.e. wafers without special pretreatment, can be used for this method.
f. The number of stack wafers is not limited and can be increased as desired.
Other features which are considered as characteristic for the invention are set forth in the appended claims.
Although the invention is illustrated and described herein as embodied in an electronic component with semiconductor chips which are stacked one on the other, it is nevertheless not intended to be limited to the details shown, since various modifications and structural changes may be made therein without departing from the spirit of the invention and within the scope and range of equivalents of the claims.
The construction and method of operation of the invention, however, together with additional objects and advantages thereof will be best understood from the following description of specific embodiments when read in connection with the accompanying drawings.